Unfortunately, the only real 'game making toolkits' available for OS X are GameMaker, which kind of sucks, Coldstone, which isn't developed anymore and won't run on anything after OS X 10.1, and GameSalad, which is barely out of alpha and can't be used to make much of anything. There's Unity, but it's a lot more complicated and a lot more expensive than anything you mentioned.

If you don't mind coding the whole game, try BlitzMax. It's $50, but it's very good. No level editor or anything, but it makes all the hard parts of game development easy.

Let the record show that this post is another example of why the Mac community is in need of a decent game maker thingy.

Then I think we should do it. Start off simple, just for 2D games, allow some form of expantion through scripts and stuff and then work on a 3D engine. Maybe something like Forge (back in the good Marathon days)

diordna Wrote:Unfortunately, the only real 'game making toolkits' available for OS X are GameMaker, which kind of sucks, Coldstone, which isn't developed anymore and won't run on anything after OS X 10.1, and GameSalad, which is barely out of alpha and can't be used to make much of anything. There's Unity, but it's a lot more complicated and a lot more expensive than anything you mentioned.
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Let the record show that this post is another example of why the Mac community is in need of a decent game maker thingy.

I would give GameSalad a try. It was made specifically because of the lack of a good game creation tools on MacOS X. The project has been in development for only 1 year, and it's Alpha was just opened up 2 weeks ago. So it's a bit unfair to compare it to GameMaker and Coldstone, which haven't been updated in the last 5 years.

It offers cool, new features like the ability to edit games while they are running, the ability to upload games to a website where your friends can play them in Safari, and eventually playing games on the iPhone. Most importantly, they have taken a firm stance on keeping the tool accessible to non-programmers. (No having to write the same game loop a billion times). It's Behavior system makes it faster and more powerful to do game logic than any set of wizards or flow diagram, and with the Expressions feature (similar to formulas on Numbers), it's about as powerful as a scripting language.

Since they've opened up their Alpha, there has been a new build about every week. They are very responsive on their forums (within a day), and it's pretty easy to suggest new features or enhancements. At the rate it's improving, it should overtake GameMaker on the Mac in no time. (And trust me, nobody uses Coldstone anymore.)

GameSalad is cute, but like I said, it doesn't appear to be capable of much yet. The web export is nice, but it requires yet another browser plug-in on the user end. I wonder why they went for web export rather than a standalone app export feature, which I would think would be more useful and desirable to people who want to share games.

I hope you don't actually think I was recommending Coldstone, what with the quip about its lack of OS X 10.2(!) compatibility. It was a great tool while it ran, though. I miss it.

Quote:It's Behavior system makes it faster and more powerful to do game logic than any set of wizards or flow diagram, and with the Expressions feature (similar to formulas on Numbers), it's about as powerful as a scripting language.

I'm going put that one in the 'outrageous claims' category, sorry.

I really wish Al would break GameMaker out of its box and turn it into something more versatile. One can dream...

Dude, I absolutely respect that, as a moderator, you volunteer your time to support this community. However, I ask that you keep an open mind. We are trying support all Mac games development after all, including the tool makers.

GameSalad just came out 2 weeks ago. Give its community time to make cool stuff. The limitations of the games that they make as they are learning does not imply the limitations upon the tool YET. And I'm guessing that they chose web hosting of games over app export to avoid players having to download and install an app every time they wanted to play a game. If you'd like a offer your members informed advice, try out the software and finish a game in it.

GameMaker is not available for the Mac yet. We both made it clear that Coldstone doesn't run anymore. Torque and Unity can be expensive to some. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that maybe we should support folks like the GameSalad team for making an original Mac app and an alternative to a aforementioned tools. May I ask if you have you tried connecting with them? Maybe you could offer your advice to the team, since they seem to be the new guys.

Also, just to be clear, I never said that GameSalad's behavior system was more powerful than scripting. I've been employed as a C++ console games programmer for over 4 years, and yes, I do prototype games in GameSalad regularly. I didn't mean to invoke sarcasm. That was just my informed opinion. What I have experienced firsthand is that the program makes game development accessible to the 99% of people who don't know how to code without sacrificing too much power. I think that's worth acknowledging.

I'm sorry if I have challenged or offended you in any way. I just wanted to offer my advice to help another, even if it meant offering a different perspective from yours. I do realize the original poster is also a fellow programmer, but since he seemed like a tools guy, I wanted to make sure that the upstart Mac game tool got a fair chance. I, for one, think that the GameSalad team is making a serious attempt, and I would like to support them and see how far the project gets. Maybe next year we'll be able to see a few folks use it for uDG, even offer their own iPhone entries. If you wait long enough, people just may surprise you.

Quote:Also, just to be clear, I never said that GameSalad's behavior system was more powerful than scripting. I've been employed as a C++ console games programmer for over 4 years, and yes, I do prototype games in GameSalad regularly. I didn't mean to invoke sarcasm. That was just my informed opinion. What I have experienced firsthand is that the program makes game development accessible to the 99% of people who don't know how to code without sacrificing too much power. I think that's worth acknowledging.

The second phrasing definitely makes more sense, and I completely agree.

Quote:If you'd like a offer your members informed advice, try out the software and finish a game in it.

If we weren't right near the end of uDG, I probably would, but until then, all I can go on is what they're showing off on their web site.

I have very high hopes for the GameSalad project. I expect that it will be a great tool at some point. Maybe it already is and they just need some more representative demos. All I really wanted to say was that I don't recommend it at this particular point in time based on my fifteen-minute test run and the games on the web site.

There's Director. I think it works well for 2d game development and it publishes cross platform which is nice. It also has 3d but I haven't used it. My udg entry Constellation is written in it. There are also a number of 3rd party Xtras written for it that extend its functionality. You can change screen resolution via the buddyAPI xtra.